Book

Arinna Weisman and Jean Smith combine clear explanations of the Buddha’s teachings on freedom and happiness with their personal stories highlighting some of the challenges and insights of practice. THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO INSIGHT MEDITATION offers advice about going on retreat and help in choosing a teacher and a sangha (practice community), as well as suggestions for further reading and information on various Insight Meditation or Vipassana centers and resources. Here is an enormously practical book that covers every aspect of the teachings a beginner needs in order to get started.”

“How wonderful to have such a warm and encouraging tone wrapped around so much helpful, straightforward information. This is the concise version of Everything You Wanted to Know…..(at least to begin) without ever being pedantic or boring. It simplifies and demystifies meditation but never trivializes it.”
– Sylvia Boorstein, author ofDon’t Just Do Something, Sit There.

“Concise, digestible chapters rest on an elegantly expressed architecture of the essential teachings of the Buddha, creating an invitation, not just a “view” of his teaching prescription for liberation.”

“With graceful clarity Weisman and Smith describe practice models both within an intensive retreat container as well as in the householder’s setting. They also offer the reader inclusive, creative adaptations of Dharma to ethnic, gender and sexual diversity, bridging relevant contemporary concerns with the Buddha’s classical blueprint for freedom.”

“An inspiring homily begins each chapter drawing the reader into the fluid teachings that follow. The book is a beautiful mosaic of the Buddha’s good Dharma.”
– Steven Smith is a Guiding Teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in Burma and Vipassana Hawai’i. He is a founder of the MettaDana Project, a health and education project in Sagaing Hills, Upper Burma.

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Phone Interviews

It is always a pleasure to meet with you either in person or by skype/phone to share time in inquiries into practice, challenges in life, or questions about the teachings. A choice is offered of 20 minutes for dana or what you are moved to offer or for an hour a sliding scale of $60-150.
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